Big budget Hollywood type movies are a growing sustainability problem. There are three main factors contributing to the environmentally damaging effects that movies have: production cost and waste, advertising, and creation of social ideals. These factors contribute in their own way to the overall problem, but all have an undeniable effect. Production cost and waste of materials during the creation of a movie contribute directly to the pollution and resource use problem that is threatening our planet’s future. Advertising and creation of social ideals are damaging in a much more indirect way. They cause us to consume more and lead to the treadmill of production type lifestyle. Since it is an environmental sustainability issue, the entire world’s population is the stakeholder. To be more specific, the advertising and social ideals affect the younger generations and those who watch the most movies more. We must all work together to make some changes in this damaging industry.

The first factor contributing to the unsustainable ways of the movie industry is the most obvious one: resource use and production cost. There is an extreme amount of material usage and waste required to make the top notch movies in the industry today. Things like elaborate sets, realistic scenery, expensive technology, and amazing special effects take a lot of money and resources to create. The special effects, especially large scale explosions, can attract a lot of viewers through the pure entertainment value of it. The problem is that to keep viewers interested, the producers must keep going bigger and bigger in their special effects attempts. For some examples of over the top special effects explosions, follow the link below:

http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/features/10-most-awesome-movie-explosions-of-all-time-ever.php

These explosions are just one example of how wasteful movie production can be. Things are constantly created and destroyed for entertainment value. We are living in an age where excess sells and it is exemplified by the movie industry. “To make more, Hollywood spends more. The average movie budget, not including hefty surcharges for prints and advertising, doubled in 10 years, from $53 million in 1998 to $106 million in 2008” (Corliss, 2010). To see a list of the most expensive movies ever made, follow the link below:

http://most-expensive.net/top-5-movies

More than ever, movie producers are being rewarded for spending and using more to create their films. This is clearly a wasteful process and we need to make some adjustments to the current system.

The second factor is one that is getting out of control: advertising. This problem is spreading across almost every industry and seems impossible to contain. The advertisers offer so much money to have their products shown in highly viewed places such as movies that it is incredibly difficult to say no. These advertisements are contributing to the consumerism that is plaguing America and the rest of the world right now. Seeing a product subconsciously makes a person more inclined to think about it and eventually buy it, even if it is something that they do not need. An advertising firm leader, Chuck Blore was quoted in Anup Shah’s article saying “advertising is the art of arresting the human intelligence just long enough to get money from it” (Shah, 2008). This is a bold statement that summarizes the strategy of the advertising industry very well. They only care about the profit they can make off of a consumer. They do not have any worries about the waste of materials that goes along with selling a product that is not truly needed by that consumer. For more information on the effects of advertising, follow the link below:

http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/parents/marketing/advertising_everywhere.cfm

Jonathan Duffy of the BBC Magazine mentions that “research shows that in programmes recorded, two-thirds to 80% of ads are skipped. That is, people don’t want to watch advertising. Hence, the increased interest in placing brands in actual programming where it is sometimes less obvious” (Shah, 2008). This is why movies are such a prime location for new age advertising. There are massive amounts of people who will be exposed to their advertisements without even noticing. Some films are even more influenced by outside sources to try to get their message across to unsuspecting viewers. “Films such as Top Gun included heavy involvement of the Pentagon and others to provide an awe-inspiring film, showing the many amazing aspects of fighter pilots, high tech weapons and what it would supposedly be like to be part of the US Navy. What was not commonly known was the level of military involvement in the film” (Shah, 2008). Even the military is trying to recruit through movies by making a movie that glorifies those in military positions. Overall, movies are shaping the way we think and live without us knowing. When this is associated with consumerism and other adverse effects, it can become a pretty sizable sustainability issue.

The third factor contributing to the sustainability problem created by movies is the social ideal that movies create. They give the viewers a false sense of what they need to be like. Viewers start to believe that they need to look, dress, and act a certain way to be ‘cool’. Where this turns into a sustainability problem is when those viewers go out and buy a product to achieve that ‘cool’ factor that they have seen portrayed in the movies. This is again a contribution to the consumer way of life that is generating extreme amounts of waste. It can also be damaging to the person because they will have a much lower self-esteem and will change who they truly are to try to act like the social ideal. An example that encompasses both of these negative effects is smoking. A study on the link between taking up smoking (smoking-initiation) and being allowed to watch R-rated movies as a teen was done by James Sargent who discovered that “smoking-initiation rates increased as parental restriction of R-rated movies decreased (2.9% for adolescents reporting that their parents never allowed them to view R-rated movies, 7.0% for those allowed to view them once in a while, and 14.3% for those allowed to view them sometimes or all the time)” (Sargent, 2004). With all of these negative factors coming from movies, it is quite clear that something needs to be done to reduce these problems. However, it is not a simple matter to solve.

A possible solution to solve the advertising crisis is to implement some government or union regulations on amount of advertising allowed in each movie. They could agree on a set amount of time that products or logos are allowed to be on the screen during any given movie and standardize the whole industry. This must be done as a unified group because the movies are making so much money off of the advertisements that they would never agree to eliminate the advertisements on their own. They need that money to fund their extremely over budgeted films. This leads to the next solution which is much more difficult to do and is tied in with the overall solution that will take a lot of time and effort to change. They could, as a unified group in the industry, agree on a set amount of money and material usage allowed per film. This is so difficult to change because they are so competitive and it has been showed that putting in the money and resources gets results. However, if they were to set a limit on resource waste, it would drastically decrease the amount of damage being done to the environment. The overall solution that is intertwined in all of this is to change the thought process that money is the determining factor in every decision we make as individuals. Money has become an extremely important part of our lives because of the fact that you must have money to survive in the world today. If you cannot buy food and afford a place to live, you will be fighting for your survival every day. If we can eventually come to find a way to live less competitively and all contribute to the good of the entire community, we can solve all of our most difficult problems in the world today.